The left-wing commentariat, Chris Matthews especially, has assailed Gingrich and called him racist for the fact that under President Obama food stamps have grown and paychecks have withered. (Former president Jimmy Carter also accused Gingrich of having “that subtlety of racism.”)

But J.C. Watts has come out to defend him. Watts grew up poor in Oklahoma and went on to be a star quarterback at the University of Oklahoma. At the time, Oklahoma’s fourth district was 90 percent white and represented by Democrats since 1922.

Watts was a liberal beta noire. He once described “some of the leadership in the black community” as “race-hustling poverty pimps.” He was right then, as now. Gingrich electrifies because he understands the nobility of work, the very work that brought Watts from cafeteria errand boy to the playing fields of Oklahoma to the halls of Congress.